A Brief History of Theory Development in Nursing

Nursing theorists, as the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes, recognize that in their world of caring for the sick there is indeed “a time to be born and a time to die”; a time for planting and a time to harvest what has been planted. They know that in their patients’ lives there is “a time for every matter under heaven.” Thus, the early “grand theorists” of nursing developed conceptual schemas that attempted to address, in some way, all of a patient’s possible “seasons” of life. More recently, however, nurse metatheorists, also sensitive to the varied and unique seasons of patients’ lives, have encouraged the development of theories of the middle range. That is, those theories that address specific healthand illness-related phenomena of concern to practicing nurses. To respond to the call for such theories, a middle-range theory of spiritual well-being in illness was developed based on the author’s many years of clinical nursing research with persons experiencing chronic and lifethreatening illnesses.*